Learn the
iPad,
at your pace.

An iPad is a flat computer that you control with your fingers. There is no mouse and no keyboard required. The whole front of it is the screen.

Pick up your iPad now. Use two hands if that feels safer. There is no need to grip it tightly.

One thing to notice right away: this iPad has no Home button. There is no physical button at the bottom of the screen. Everything happens by touching the screen itself.

Press the Top button once. The screen lights up. That is the iPad waking up.

Press it again and the screen goes dark. That is putting it to sleep.

Go ahead and try this two or three times before moving on. There is nothing here you can break.

There are two grip styles most people use: one hand on the side with the other free to tap, or both hands on the sides. Try rotating the device, the screen will follow.

Most people find landscape (sideways) easier for reading and video calls. Portrait (tall) is good for browsing or taking notes. Either is fine. Pick whatever feels natural.

Run through the checklist below on your own iPad before moving on. If something does not work the first time, try it again, you cannot break anything.

When the iPad wakes up, you land on the Home Screen. The rows of little pictures are called apps. The strip at the very bottom is called the Dock.

Think of the Home Screen as the front porch of the iPad. No matter where you wander off to, you can always come back here.

This is the most important gesture on this iPad, since there is no physical Home button.

Place your finger on the thin black bar at the very bottom of the screen and slide your finger straight up. The current app shrinks away and you are back on the Home Screen.

Practice this three times right now. Open Settings, swipe up to go Home. Open Settings again, swipe up to go Home. One more time. Saying it out loud (“swipe up from the bottom”) helps it stick.

Touch any app icon and hold your finger there. Do not lift it. After about a second, a small menu appears. That is a long press.

You will not need this every day, but it is good to know it exists. Tap an empty space on the screen to dismiss the menu when you are done.

Three apps, three trips home. Did you make it back each time? Walk through the checklist below and only move on once each step works smoothly.

Quick recap from Module 1.2: tap any icon to open an app, and swipe up from the bottom bar to go Home. Try it once before continuing.

Place your finger on the Home indicator bar at the bottom and swipe up. This time, pause halfway and hold for a second.

All your recent apps appear as cards. This is called the App Switcher. Tap any card to jump to that app.

Give yourself a few tries. The motion (“swipe up and pause”) is a little different from the regular go-Home swipe (“swipe up all the way”).

This trips up almost everyone, so it is worth understanding clearly:

If someone has told you to “always close your apps”, you can let that habit go. Your iPad is built to handle it for you.

Two motions to remember from this module:

Same starting point, different ending. Practice the difference until it feels natural.

Glance at the top of the screen. The time is on the left. On the right you will see your Wi-Fi signal and the battery level. These are called status icons. They are there to tell you what is going on. You do not tap them.

Inside Control Center you will see two tall sliders. The sun icon controls brightness, and the speaker icon controls volume.

Drag a slider up to increase, drag it down to decrease. The screen and the sound respond right away, so you can see and hear what works for you.

The bell icon puts the iPad on silent. Tap it once and the iPad will not make any sound. Tap it again to turn sound back on.

Use this before church, a doctor’s appointment, or at night when you do not want notifications waking you up.

Run through the checklist on your own iPad before moving on.

On the Home Screen, find the gray gear icon. That is Settings. Tap it. If you cannot find it on your first page of apps, swipe sideways to check the next page.

There is a switch at the top of the Wi-Fi screen. If it is green, Wi-Fi is already on. If it is gray, tap it once to turn it on.

A list of nearby networks will appear below.

When you tap the network name, a box appears asking for the password. The keyboard slides up from the bottom of the screen.

Type carefully. Wi-Fi passwords are case-sensitive, which means capital letters matter. The shift key (the upward-pointing arrow on the left side of the keyboard) lets you switch between capital and lowercase.

When you are done, tap Join on the keyboard.

If you ever want the iPad to stop connecting to a network, say, an old coffee shop you no longer visit, tap the small (i) next to that network’s name, then tap Forget This Network and confirm.

Important: do not tap Forget on a network you still use at home. If you do, you will need to type the password again to reconnect.

Open Settings and tap Display & Brightness. Drag the slider to the brightness you like.

Brighter is good in daylight or near a window. Dimmer is easier on your eyes at night or in a dark room.

Still in Display & Brightness, tap Text Size. Drag the slider to the right to make all the text on the iPad bigger.

Most apps respect this setting. Do not be shy with it: bigger is better than squinting. You can always come back and adjust it later.

There are two ways to change volume:

Try both. Find the level that is comfortable in the room you are in.

One thing to know about this device: there is no headphone jack. To listen with headphones or earbuds, you will need either wireless (Bluetooth) headphones or a USB-C adapter for wired ones.

Walk through the first-day comfort settings below. Take your time on each one. These small choices add up to an iPad that feels like yours.

If an app stops responding, do not panic. Swipe up from the bottom and pause to open the App Switcher (you practiced this in Module 1.3).

Find the frozen app’s card and flick it up off the screen. Then open the app again. Most of the time it works fine on the second try.

If the battery icon in the top-right corner is red, the iPad needs to be plugged in. Use the USB-C cable that came with it.

Plug the smaller end into the port at the bottom of the iPad and the larger end into the wall adapter. A small lightning bolt appears on the battery icon. That means it is charging.

You can keep using the iPad while it charges. And remember: this device uses USB-C, not the older Lightning cable. If the cable does not slide in easily, it is the wrong one. Do not force it.

If you ever feel lost inside an app or buried in Settings, fall back on the gesture you have practiced the most: swipe up from the bottom to go Home.

You can always start fresh from the Home Screen. Nothing is broken, and nothing is permanent.

You can hold an iPad, wake it, navigate the Home Screen, switch apps, open Control Center, connect to Wi-Fi, make it comfortable, and fix the most common problems.

Your final challenge: run through all seven module skills below in order, without the videos. If anything trips you up, scroll back to that module and refresh your memory. You did it once, you can do it again.